It’s been comical to watch environmentalists bludgeon each other over Jon Tester’s wilderness bill, the so-called “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act,” FJRA for short. The extremists are demanding 6 million wilderness acres all at once. The incrementalists respond by saying FJRA’s million acres of wilderness and “wilderness lite” are really, really just a first step to getting it all in chunks. Same goal, different tactics.
Well, some Montanans might be interested in the jobs, recreation and, yep, FOREST parts of the bill.
Supporters claim FJRA “creates new jobs.” Nah. The jobs “created” are actually jobs the sawmill “partners” (and everyone else) want to save. But given average Montana harvest yields, FJRA’s range of possible volume is 35 to 100 million board feet. That means, at 5.5 jobs per million (2/3rds in the mills) the number of jobs preserved might range from 193 to 550, most likely on the lower end, especially if radicals sue as expected.
Interestingly, the FJRA jobs in Yaak/Lincoln County would mostly go to Idaho, where the mills are. Only one niche mill (a bill supporter with 20 employees) is left in Lincoln County.
New investors won’t be attracted to Montana by either the small amount or short duration of wood from FJRA projects. As for creating new jobs in ranching or mining, forget it.
What about recreation? After all, Forest Service recreation data proves that 98 percent of Americans prefer “modern” recreation: Everything from driving the sedan into the forest on Sunday, to RV’ing at developed campgrounds, to mountain biking … all activities prohibited in wilderness.
Politically correct “quiet” recreation amounts to only about 2 percent of recreation visitor days, of which fully half are hunters in season.
Last summer, FJRA “partner” Trout Unlimited bought a poll (conducted by a Democratic firm in Boulder, Colo.) that claimed a “guarantee” of motorized “access to designated areas” – the various “conservation areas” or “Wilderness Lite” covering 310,000 acres.
But not once in 84 pages does FJRA “guarantee” any modern recreation access, mandate it, or provide for replacement access or mileage exchanges for necessary closures. Instead, all the recreation sections have language where the “Secretary concerned” (either Interior or Agriculture) can administratively close roads or trails to all public use, for almost any reason. That’s a “guarantee” no sane person would believe.
Are there recreation “guarantees” for the non-wilderness, multiple-use areas? Not one.
OK, but what about the forest? Well, about 6 million acres of forested land in Montana has been either burnt or bug-killed since 2001, a conversion from green to black/red/dead of 600,000 acres a year. About 2.7 million acres were infested with beetles in 2008 and 2009 alone, and 60 to 80 percent of those trees will die, rot and/or burn.
So, in response to this cascading disaster, what does Tester’s FJRA propose? To “mechanically treat” a whopping 10,000 acres a year of this metastasizing mess.
On the Beaverhead, the “suitable” area for work is 1.9 million acres. In 10 years, 70,000 acres might see work, leaving 1.83 million acres untouched, growing another billion feet of fuel, good for about 135,000 acres of wildfire. “Stewardship,” my ear … but it gets worse.
FJRA contains no legal reform or exemption language. After the wilderness gets set aside, the rest of the package, even the trivial amount of “stewardship” FJRA proposes is likely (no, make that “guaranteed”) to be “courtwrecked.” Everything else remains mired in the same old dysfunctional legal gridlock.
For 46 years, environmentalists have abused the court system and rulings from their pet judges to hold public lands hostage, all in the holy name of wilderness. Through this blackmail, Montanans have lost jobs, lost recreation – and now, the hostage is dang near dead. We – and that means all Americans – are losing Montana’s national forests.
Ya know, I’d be cool with Greens getting some real wilderness if they’d agree to let the rest of us have our forests back. But Sen. Tester’s proposal designates wilderness without substantial legal reforms or protections for the rest of the “deal” on the rest of the landscape. That’s like the FBI paying hijackers ransom without making them give over the hostages – and then, gassing up the plane.